As if your list of things to be afraid of wasn’t long enough already, here’s another one to add to it. This is probably not breaking news to anyone, but in the wake of online media becoming a more affordable, though not entirely viable, business model than that of traditional news sources, the newspaper is dying. And in a Salon cover story, writer Gary Kamiya is already writing its eulogy.

The real tragedy, Kamiya concludes, is not just the death of the paper thing we hold between our fingers over coffee and whole-grain toast, it’s the death of objectivity.

That’s right. Only the real (that means trained) on-the-ground journalists, the ones out there meeting people and reporting, are truly objective. He writes, “Newspapers embrace the institutional mission of objectivity: Their goal is to find out and report the truth about a given subject, no matter what that truth is. They are not supposed to go in looking for an answer, or holding preconceived beliefs.”

So, it probably goes without saying that most of what happens here at Open Salon falls into the category of "having preconceived beliefs." Most of us aren't exactly doing hard reporting here. We might do some research on our topic, a little reading for instance, but a lot of what transpires here comes from life experience—which you could argue is on-the-ground reporting, minus the objectivity.

But is objectivity over-rated?

It’s an interesting argument Kamiya making, allowing you an opportunity step back and take a picture of the culture changing right in front of your very eyes. I had to think some more about it before trying to write about his conclusions, which seemed, and he admits this, unusually dystopian.

At Open Salon, we all know that we’re writing with our opinions intact. Yet, I would bet that most of us come here just for that. I personally find that kind of writing interesting and refreshing. Having personal experience blended into the narrative gives nonfiction writing, even reporting, something that I admire above all: voice. To me, this means it has a human touch.

But that’s my thing, obviously, and I’ll admit to having bais about it. Voice-driven fiction and nonfiction has always been my favorite kind of writing. It’s what gives writing its musical, lyrical qualities. It’s what makes it a pleasure to read, makes it feel more human, more like art than fact dissemination.

It was people like Joan Didion, Truman Capote, and Tom Wolfe who carved out the concept of the New Journalism in the 1960s and 70s. This meant, among other things, bringing the “I” into the writing and using literary techniques to tell about things that were newsworthy. To my mind, the New Journalism raised the bar for writing. And we have writers like Didion, and many others, to thank for what we continue to have here on Open Salon.

At times there’s something kind of disturbing, apocalyptic even, about Kamiya’s statements. “The brave new media world will be one of tunnel vision and self-selected expertise, in which reported pieces are increasingly devoid of human interaction or human stories, often written by individuals who do not pretend to have a neutral stance.” Because I find new media both exciting and edifying and not at all devoid of human interaction, I have to stop myself from having a knee-jerk reaction to this, from thinking that this is some kind of elitist statement meant to keep all of those who didn’t go to journalism school from trying to write about the news.

In other words, I have to try to be objective in my response. I have to remind myself that he is not making bloggers into the switch pullers, though in some instances he is, but trying to save a dying institution, one that he values above all else.

Kamiya makes an excellent point about the newspaper that some people may not know. Warning: I’m going to insert some more of my experience here. A few years back, when I had a not-so-enviable position at a scholarly press, an editor from a major newspaper phoned me one day to ask me some questions about my job and the institution I worked for because she was “keeping her eye out for other work.” When she told me what her position was, I was dumfounded. Why on earth would she want to leave that place and come here?

“Because the insert-newspaper-name-here is dying,” she said, understanding my confusion. I can remember going home and discussing it with my husband incredulously. “How can a newspaper just die,” I asked, I suppose as more of a rhetorical question. “How is that even possible? How can a major city go without a newspaper?” The answer was pretty simple though. It wasn’t going to disappear, it was going to be replaced by its online counterpart. And it would be a slow, painful death.

So why is that so bad? You can come up with a number of reasons why, and I’m sure you will. But what this writer seems to be getting at is that we, as bloggers, are coming at our stories armed with second and third-hand knowledge. That is to say, we’re reading news stories (as I did here) and writing about them (as I did here), and in the process, watering them down. We’re not out there, in the world, interviewing subjects and having editors check our facts. “Online journalism is essentially parasitic.” (Okay, I’ll try not to take that personally.)

This not only throws the bloggers credibility into question, it suggests something deeper: they are contributing to the erosion of the time-honored practice of real hard-hitting journalism. Does this mean, because a lot of us are here mostly to tell of our experience and not to report the news, we may be lowering the bar?

One of the main reasons I come here is to read people’s stories and opinions. And I don’t for one minute think any of us are competing with newspapers, but instead are engaging in a kind of magazine-style, conversational tone that doesn’t pretend to be breaking news. It does happen that news is broken on OS, and perhaps this is what the editors are striving for—after all, “we make the headlines.”

But are we guilty of tunnel vision? Are we, essentially, “choosing our own reality” here? I don’t take offense at any of his questions. In fact, I see some truth in what he is saying. It could be just a question of preference.

Most of what I’ve written here has been personal experience. Occasionally I hit on a topic that is newsworthy, but most because it has affected me in some way. But I will say that I learn a lot about what is going on in the world here at OS, whether or not it is pushed through the filter of someone’s experience. That doesn’t take away from the import. There are many talented and informed people here. And many times I just prefer outright the lens of personal experience. I like how it makes me better understand human nature. I might even say it makes me a more compassionate person. I don’t think I’m alone in this .

I recently read a memorial in Harper’s written by George Saunders, who was writing about the late David Foster Wallace’s profound contribution to the world. It perfectly summed up why I keep writing and why writing and reading what others are writing about here is so important to me.

“Through our work, in our actions, by our engagement with others and through the engagement with our own minds, we touch the world,” Saunders wrote. He was talking about a great writer, but he was also talking about all of us.

I'm giving you an excuse to do a little back patting right now. If your week has been like mine has, you could use some of that. There I go again...